Tuesday, January 02, 2007

LYNCHING OR JUSTICE ??? WORLD REACTION TO SADDAM'S EXECUTION

SILENCING A MADE IN AMERICA DICTATORTHE FILM WITH HOODED FIGURES LOOKS LIKE THE TYPICAL AL QEDA PROPAGANDA FILM OF THEIR SO CALLED ENEMIES BEING EXECUTED- HOW DO WE TELL THE DIFFERENCE !!!

Here are some of the responses to the execution of Saddam Hussein besides those presented to us by the one sided version given to us by the American Mass Media , CNN etc. who more & more just repeat what the PR team of the Bush Regime has told them & they therefore keep to the prescribed “ Talking Points” as usual. More & more they sound like the fictional TV announcers in the film “V FOR VENDETTA ” but thankfully there are still other voices out there.Adding to this is the unofficial video taken of Saddam’s execution & has been broadcast on the Internet. In this video the witnesses to the execution loudly taunt & jeer Saddam & the executioners wear black ski -mask which makes the proceedings a little less than dignified & make it look & sound like a Lynching in the America deep south .

There are several important issues that need to be discussed & reviewed. The first question is whether the trial of Saddam should have been done by the World Court & not by what many see as an American Puppet Iraqi Regime ? Secondly many have raised questions about how the trial was conducted & whether or not it was a fair trial or just a “ Show Trial” to appease some Iraqis & the American Public . The former Soviet Union had a habit of holding such “ Show Trials” as if they were truly interested in truth & justice .Another issue is why there was such a rush to carry out the Execution ? Couldn’t it wait a couple of weeks or months?Another question is why execution as opposed to life in prison ?And why was Saddam execute on the Holiest day in The Islamic Calendar - were those involved unaware of this fact & that it might become a public relations nightmare or did they care - or did they do it on purpose as a warning to all Sunni Muslims or as an insult to all Muslims ?

-“ Eid al-Adha or Feast of Sacrifice is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar. It concludes the Pilgrimmage to Mecca. Eid al-Adha lasts for three days and commemorates Ibraham's (Abraham) willingness to obey God by sacrificing his son. Muslims believe the son to be Ishmael rather than Isaac as told in the Old Testament. Ishmael is considered the forefather of the Arabs. According to the Koran, Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son when a voice from heaven stopped him and allowed him to sacrifice a ram instead.

The feast re-enacts Ibrahim's obedience by sacrificing a cow or ram. The family eats about a third of the meal and donates the rest to the poor. “From : KU Medical Center Home Religious Also see:http://www.islamonline.net/

AND :from GREATER KASHMIR

JANUARY 1st 2007YANKEE NOOSE SILENCES SADDAM

‘Biased’ trialSaddam’s defence team and human rights groups complained that the former Iraqi leader had not received a fair trial.Najeeb Al-Nuaimi, one of the defence lawyers, told Al Jazeera: “There was bias, the prosecution sided with their politicians, it was an ethnically established court with three Shia and one Sunni.”The US-based rights group Human Rights Watch condemned the hanging, saying history would judge his trial and execution harshly.Richard Dicker, a Human Rights Watch director, said: “Saddam Hussein was responsible for horrific, widespread human rights violations, but those acts, however brutal, cannot justify his execution, a cruel and inhuman punishment.”The execution, which became imminent after his appeal was this week rejected, brought to an end the life of one of the Middle East’s most brutal dictators.Launching the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, campaigns against the Kurds and putting down the southern Shia revolt that followed the 1991 Gulf war - triggered by his invasion of Kuwait - put the casualties attributable to his rule into the hundreds of thousands.But the conviction that led to his hanging was for a relatively lower figure - the deaths of 148 men and boys from the Shia town of Dujail, where members of an opposition group had made a botched attempt to assassinate him in 1982.

and from THE INDEPENDENT in the UKhttp://news.independent.co.uk/ Saddam trial verdict tarnished by Iraqi court's failingsBy Anne Penketh, Diplomatic EditorPublished: 30 December 2006 “... the first trial against Saddam Hussein, in which he was charged with human rights violations dating back to 1982, was so rife with defects that the guilty verdict was unsound, according to Human Rights Watch.

In a 97-page report on a trial which centred on the execution of almost 150 Shia Muslims and the arrest of 1,500 in Dujail, Human Rights Watch identified the following flaws:

And :THE INDEPENDENT UK Saddam: The questions that will live onFrom Andrew Buncombe in WashingtonPublished: 30 December 2006

andfrom THE INDEPENDENT UK Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by AmericaPublished: 30 December 2006

AND see his article on December 31st 2006

“ He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him “

How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal”

By Robert Fisk

12/31/06 "The Independent" -- -- We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

OR FROM:Rupert Cornwell : How Washington and London helped to create the monster they went to war to destroy:

The dealings between the US and Saddam's Iraq over the quarter of a century before 2003 are a story of deceit, miscalculation and strategic blunders by both sides. And they began, as they would end, in the shadow of a common enemy: Iran.

And :THE INDEPENDENT UK Saddam: The questions that will live onFrom Andrew Buncombe in WashingtonPublished: 30 December 2006

AND as for the timing of the execution : 'He is already history'In this remarkable dispatch, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, one of the few journalists who can still move freely about Baghdad, watches the execution with Sunni insurgents

Sunday December 31, 2006The Observer

“In a small, bare living room in Baghdad, two Sunni mujahideens, Abu A'isha and his friend Abu Hamza, sat mesmerised. The Shia-controlled state TV was showing the final moments of the life of their former leader, the noose being tightened around his neck. Saddam was dressed in a black coat, his black dyed hair pushed to the back, his hand and legs shackled. Men in civilian clothes and ski masks helped him up a small ladder. A trap door surrounded by a metal rail could be seen.

Saddam appeared a little confused and exchanged a few words with his masked hangman, who gestured at his neck. Saddam nodded and the hangman wrapped a black piece of cloth around his neck.

The TV channel repeated the scenes many times, cut before the actual execution moment and followed by television scenes of jubilant Shia men and boys dancing, accompanied by patriotic songs. 'Those Shia, they killed him on the day of the Eid just to humiliate us,' said Abu Hamza.”

ALGIERS, Algeria: The Algerian government said Sunday it regretted the execution of Saddam Hussein and hoped the hanging of the former Iraqi president would not lead to increased levels of violence in Iraq.

"Algeria regrets the execution of former President Saddam Hussein on Eid al-Adha, a sacred day ... of clemency and generosity for all of the Arab and Muslim world," the government said in a statement. Saddam's execution Saturday coincided with Eid al-Adha, the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar, which began Saturday for Sunni Muslims.

In the statement, the North African country said it "hopes this development will not add to an increase in the violence and the tragic ordeals that the Iraqi people are living."

The government of neighboring Tunisia also objected to the timing of the execution, calling Saddam's hanging on Eid al-Adha "a serious attack on the sentiments of Muslim people."

Saddam Hussein was executed this morning (6:00 a.m. Baghdad time), on Eid al-Adha. The timing of his execution was a mistake.

However, the timing of Saddam's execution has a deleterious effect that is more difficult to measure empirically. Eid al-Adha is one of Islam's two most important holidays, and today throughout the Muslim world the holiday is being overshadowed by Saddam's execution. A source in the Muslim community reports that in Saudi Arabia, some Muslims simultaneously watched the Eid salat on one television channel and Saddam's execution on another. One woman in Saudi Arabia commented that she found this "unsettling," and not because she has any warm feelings for Saddam. Rather, for many Middle Easterners, Saddam's execution seemingly intrudes on what should be a time of celebration for them: it is an intrusion because the Iraq war is extremely unpopular throughout the Middle East, and the televised execution is a stark reminder that the war is still raging. (Reuters also reports on Middle Eastern consternation about the timing of the execution.) The same Muslim source speculates that for other Middle Easterners, the execution may be a painful reminder that they have little recourse against the dictatorial regimes that rule them without the United States. The negative symbolism is heightened by linking the execution to Eid.And :Pilgrims Unhappy at Saddam Execution on EidSiraj Wahab, Arab NewsMINA, 31 December 2006 — They either hated him or loved him, but almost everyone here in the tent city of Mina was outraged at the hanging of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on Eid Al-Adha. The hanging was viewed by most pilgrims as a corruption of the occasion.

“Would it be OK if the president of the United States were hanged on Dec. 25?” shouted Anmar Al-Khodair, an Iraqi pilgrim from Anbar. When it was pointed out to him that it was the Iraqi government not the US government that executed Saddam, his reply was: “This Iraqi government is a puppet government. It is the US that is responsible for security and all other aspects in Iraq. The Iraqi government is based in the US-protected Green Zone in Baghdad and the writ of the government is confined to the Green Zone in Iraq...”

“ The execution of Iraqi ex-president Saddam Hussein is a “political assassination” and “violates all international laws,” the Palestinian ruling Hamas movement said on Saturday.“Saddam Hussein was a prisoner of war,” a spokesman for the Islamist movement, Fawzi Barhum, told AFP.“(His) hanging ... is a political assassination that violates all international laws that are supposed to protect prisoners of war.”Barhum accused the United States of “having crossed all red lines” and denounced Saddam’s trial as an “unjust” process.He also criticised the day chosen for Saddam’s execution, just hours before the start of the feast of Eid Al-Adha.“The hanging took place on the day of the Eid and this is a message to the Arab street — the Americans have launched threats to all the Arabs,” he said. ”

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Marianna Belenkaya) - Saddam Hussein has been put to death. The execution of a head of state, even if a toppled one, is an unusual event and is bound to provoke a strong reaction.

The trial of the Iraqi dictator became an important signal to all heads of state, a warning that sooner or later they will be called to account for their actions. Nobody will get away with crimes like the ones for which Saddam was tried. Heads of state are not immune and will have to answer for their deeds.

Moreover, the legitimacy of the verdict is questionable.

This may be so, but it has left a bitter aftertaste. The situation reminds me of the recent death of another dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who, although charged with crimes against humanity, was never tried. The trial was called off because of the dictator's old age. When he died, hundreds of his opponents said they were sorry Pinochet had died without a trial and a sentence. They wanted a legal punishment rather than his death.

Hussein is definitely guilty of the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and of the wars against Iran and Kuwait launched on his orders or with his silent approval. But his actions were in some cases part of a greater regional game involving other players.

AND FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE FOR EXAMPLE:

Saddam Hussein and Pervez al-Musharrafby Kathy The first concerns Muslim anger about the timing of Saddam Hussein's execution --on the eve of one of Islam's most important holy days:. The Muslim religiousholiday Eid al-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice) is meant to commemorate ...Liberty Street -

The Execution of Saddam Husseinby earl-ku I never knew bout this until I saw it on the Rangers blog read it on the newsfew days ago when he was sentenced to hang to death, he was hanged on the Muslimcelebration of Eid al-Adha. Eid al-Adha, Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Bush.kukujiao.com -- References

Saddam Execution Farceby Mad Canuck Eid al-Adha (the feast of the sacrifice) is one of two major feasts in the Muslimcalendar. Sunnis celebrate Eid al-Adha this year starting December 30, whileShias celebrate it one day later. Thus, Saddam's execution was held on the ...Mad Canuck -

Saddam's hangingby Bruce Miller Josh Marshall captured the problem of Saddam's execution well in this post of12/29/06 when ... Juan Cole writes about the execution in Saddam: The death ofa dictator Salon ... This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, ...The Blue Voice -